n faith.

With the council of Patna, 242 B.C, begins at thousands of the
missionaries the geographical separation of the church, which results
in Southern and Northern Buddhism.[60]

It is at this period that the monastic bodies become influential. The
original Sangha, congregation, is defined as consisting of three or
more brethren. The later monastery is a business corporation as well
as a religious body. The great emperors that now ruled India (not the
petty clan-kings of the centuries before) were no longer of pure
birth, and some heresy was the only religion that would receive them
with due honor. They affected Buddhism, endowed the monasteries, in
every was enriched the church, built for it great temples, and in turn
were upheld by their thankful co-religionists. Among the six[61] rival
heresies that of Buddha was predominant, and chiefly because of royal
influence. The Buddhist head of the Ceylon church was Acoka's own son.
Still more important for Buddhism was its adoption by the migratory
Turanians in the centuries following. Tibet and China were opened up
to it through the influence of these foreign kings, who at least
pretended to adopt the faith of Buddha.[62] But as it was adopted by
them, and as it extended beyond the limits of India, just so much
weaker it became at home, where its strongest antagonists were the
sectarian pantheistic parties not so heterodox as itself.

Buddhism lingered in India till the twelfth or thirteenth century,
although in the seventh it was already decadent, as appears from the
account of Hiouen-Thsang, the Chinese pilgrim. It is found to-day in
Tibet, Ceylon, China, Japan, and other outlying regions, but it is
quite vanished from its old home. The cause of its extinction is
obvious. The Buddhist victorious was not the modest and devout
mendicant of the early church. The fire of hate, lighted if at all by
Buddhism,[63] smouldered till Brahmanism, in the form of Hinduism, had
begotten a religion as popular as Buddhism, or rather far more
popular, and for two reasons. Buddhism had no such picturesque tales
as those that enveloped with poetry the history of the man-god
Krishna, Again, Buddhism in its monastic development had separated
itself more and more from the people. Not mendicant monks, urging to a
pure life, but opulent churches with fat priests; not simple
discourses calculated to awaken the moral and religious consciousness,
but subtle arguments on discipline and metaphy